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Paidamoyo Chipunza Senior Health Reporter
“People should just be able to get tested for HIV the same way they get tested for diabetes or high blood pressure. We are wasting a lot of resources through awareness campaigns and other specialised services instead of just integrating HIV testing and counselling into the normal health delivery system,” were the words of St Albert’s Mission Hospital medical officer, Dr Julia Musariri.

She was speaking to journalists during a National Aids Council organised media tour to Mashonaland Central province meant to profile the organisation’s activities in response to HIV ahead of the 18th International Conference on Aids and STIs in Africa (ICASA) currently underway in Harare.

Dr Musariri said if HIV testing remains optional, the United Nations dream of having at least 90 percent of the population knowing their HIV status, ensuring that 90 percent of those tested are put on treatment and having the viral load of those on treatment suppressed to undetectable levels by the year 2020, will never be realised.

“I am of the opinion that the whole population should be tested just like we do with sugar (diabetes), tuberculosis and malaria – tisiyane nazvo izvi zvekuti titange taombera mitupo wemunhu because we will never achieve our goals as a country,” she said.

Dr Musariri, whose institution was the first in the country to implement prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme back then in 2001 and was also the first to offer anti-retroviral drugs to HIV positive people before handing over both projects to Government, described the current scenario of encouraging people to get tested instead of making it mandatory as a snake biting its own tail.

She becomes the first health technocrat to publicly call for compulsory HIV testing after President Mugabe made the same recommendation in 2013 to heads of state and Government at the 33rd SADC Summit in Lilongwe.

President Mugabe argued that a majority of people who volunteered to get tested when they were not sick were HIV negative.

The President’s remarks were however received with outrage by human rights activists who argued that forced HIV testing was a violation of human rights.

But Dr Musariri said if forced HIV testing was a violation of human rights, then why don’t the same activists make noise when people get tested for other health conditions the moment they present themselves before a health practitioner?

“How did the ministry manage to test people for sugar, malaria and so on, why then stigmatise HIV? Why should HIV testing be a thing that requires us to go to Honolulu yet we claim that having HIV is no different to having high blood pressure and other illnesses?” she said.

She said Government should stop viewing HIV testing as a programme but look at it as a health service which should be integrated into the normal delivery system just like any other condition if Government wants to normalise it.

One of the nurses at the hospital, sister Itai Wankis who started the PMTCT programme at St Albert’s Mission Hospital back in 2001, said as the science to HIV treatment, prevention and care continued to change, there was also need to be dynamic in HIV response.

Sister Wankis said at the introduction of PMTCT, stigma was very high among communities and everything was done behind closed doors.

She said then women were given a single dose of Nevirapine but now they are given a triple combination of drugs.

Sister Wankis said at the introduction of PMTCT, health workers were only concentrating on the health of the baby leaving out the parents but now even the mothers are given anti-retroviral drugs upon testing positive.

She said back then, the number of children contracting HIV from their mothers while on PMTCT was high compared to now where no single case of babies born to HIV positive mothers tested positive since the beginning of the year.

“HIV is dynamic hence we also need to practise dynamism in our response efforts,” she said.

Ms Safina Magodhi from Centenary who gave birth to the first HIV negative child in the country to be born from an HIV positive mother echoed the practitioner’s sentiments saying HIV testing was the foundation to treatment and care of Aids.

Ms Magodhi whose child is now 15 years old said if it wasn’t for her courage, her child could have been infected and possibly dead by now.

“Back then, people didn’t trust the whites who were supporting the programme. They thought they were actually introducing dangerous viruses into our bodies through the pill, but I was courageous enough to firstly get tested and secondly agree to be on PMTCT.

“Nine months later, my child was born HIV negative and to this date he is a living testimony to the success of PMTCT,” said Ms Magodhi.

She said there was no way HIV positive mothers could be assisted to reduce infection to their babies without getting tested.

Addressing journalists at a press conference held on the sidelines of ICASA in Harare yesterday, UNAIDS regional director Dr Sheila Dinotshe Tlou urged governments to be innovative and devise ways of encouraging people to get tested.

Ms Dinotshe Tlou said initiatives such as door-to-door testing, self testing and provider initiated testing could go a long way in boosting the numbers of people knowing their status.

“With such initiatives, I am confident that we will be able to achieve our targets without necessarily forcing people to get tested,” she said.

Head of Aids and TB Unit in the Ministry of Health and Child Care is on record saying the programme’s main challenge was to getting people tested for HIV.

According to the Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey (ZDHS) and yearly national estimates, the HIV burden in Zimbabwe continues to decrease with latest statistics showing decreases in national HIV incidence rate, new infections and the number of children getting infected through mother to child transmission.

The country’s prevalence rate has however remained static at 15 percent while the number of people on anti-retroviral treatment is pegged at 63,4 percent for adults and 55 percent for children.

About 1,2 million are estimated to be living with HIV and Aids.